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Today was filled to the brim with interesting announcements at Google I/O. While Mountain View was focused heavily on new tools and services for developers, a few snazzy consumer-facing features made their way into the keynote as well. No, there isn’t any new fancy hardware, but Google is clearly taking usability and consumer-friendly interfaces very seriously going forward.

Android

Last year, Google boasted 400 million Android activations, and that was a fourfold increase from 2011. This year, an amazing 900 million Android devices have been activated to date. With over 48 billion app installs, Google is clearly focused on monetizing all of these users. Year over year, Android app revenue has increased 2.5 times. In fact, Google paid out developers more in the first four months of this year than it did in all of 2012. Finally, developers are starting to make real money with Android. More importantly, Android developers are getting access to more APIs to make new apps: better Google Maps, cross platform sign-on, upstream messages to Google servers, notification syncing, and brand new gaming services. Devices running Froyo and above will all be able to take advantage of these new APIs once they start rolling out.

Strangely, Google announced that they will be selling an unlocked version of the Samsung Galaxy S4. Instead of using Samsung’s custom software, it will be running a vanilla version of Android directly from Google. Starting June 6th, this version of the S4 will be available unlocked for $649. It’s pricy, but it’s undoubtedly some of the most powerful Android hardware available.

Chrome

The Chrome portion of the presentation was mostly spent talking about existing technologies. Sure, the Chrome team can now boast over 750 million users, but there just isn’t anything all that exciting to hang their hats on. Google’s WebM and WebP technologies save bandwidth, but that’s old news. It’s somewhat strange to see this kind of information featured so prominently in the keynote. Perhaps most interestingly, Google has been working on optimizing JavaScript to make high-end tasks like gaming a possibility on Chromebooks, tablets, and smartphones. While JavaScript rendering has sped up about 24% on the desktop, mobile performance has seen well over 50% performance gains. Now that they’re optimizing for asm.js, even complex games written in C++ can be ported to run directly in a web browser with no plugins required.

Music

One of the most consumer-focused aspects of the entire event was the announcement of Google Play Music All Access. Starting today, Google is now offering an all-you-can-eat music subscription service for $9.99 a month. You can stream music from your own library or Google’s catalog as much as you want on the web and on mobile devices. Essentially, think of this as a Spotify competitor. It has a 30-day free trial, and those of you who sign up for the service before the end of June will end up only paying $7.99 per month. If you think this might be right for you, it’s in your best interest to jump aboard right now. Sadly, the rest of the world will have to wait for contracts to be signed — it’s US-only for now.

No new Nexus hardware (of ANY sort), no new Android version… It’s been a while since I felt so underwhelmed (to be more precise, since the last Apple keynote).

John Holland

Are you out of your mind? This announcement is the nexus 4.5.6 combined. Pure Google is a nexus device on the best hardware available, with unlimited updates would you rather buy pure Google on Samsung or a glass LG? get real amazing announcement

Valentin Jalba

Honestly, how is that Pure Google Galaxy S4 “amazing”? You could have had the exact same thing with flashing a stock Android image on a normal S4! ***not to mention that the Nexus 4 is $299, and the “amazing” S4 is more than double*** [PS - I know that overall, the S4 does more - but this is not the point]

And it’s not only the lack of Nexus devices, it’s also the lack of Android updates. I mean, really – not even 4.3? …

Guest

-repost-

ee mail

Google needs to market Android as the OS which does everything at speeds comparable to windows.
And if its not able to do so , mobile Ubuntu Linux would win.

Jamie MacDonald

I’d argue that that to the general public, Linux is an unknown, and Windows on the phone is unpopular.

iron_dinges

I would like more in Maps’ right-click context menu, e.g. copy coordinates to clipboard.

As for music, I am imagining a free service with audio ads every 30 seconds. The horror.

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